Optical cable is widely used by many companies for installing networks in data centers or Internet exchange points to transmit telephone signals, Internet communication and cable television signals.
There are some evident advantages of fibre optics over other data transmission mediums. For example, fibre optics has rather high bandwidth and it is easy to accommodate increasing bandwidth, using fibre optics. Also fibre has a very low rate of bit error that makes it resistant to electromagnetic interference. Finally fiber provides secure data transmission, since by monitoring an optical network and by carefully measuring its parameters intrusions can be easily detected.
Though while trying to use fibre optics companies' face certain difficulties. Installing optical cable network is still rather costly. Besides there required expensive special test equipment like OTDR (Optical Time Domain Reflectometer) or optical probes, since the similar equipment used for conventional electron-based networking is not applicable to fibre optic network. Another drawback is susceptibility of fibre optics to physical damage during installation or construction activities.
To top it all the structure of optical cable itself has number of disadvantages. In classical scheme buffer tuner and optical diode are located on transmitter, light sensitive detector and buffer amplifier are located on receiver. Cable here is insulated optical fiber with connectors.
So there will be inevitable light (signal) refraction because of different mediums (solid-vaporized-solid). Also there can be decreasing of signal strength (light intensity) because of surface contamination and damaging (scratches). And finally there is a chance for decreasing of light intensity because of non-perfect launch angle of light in optical cable (connector looseness).
Thus, there is a need for alternative approach to fibre optics structure reorganization that would provide still effective data transmission but allow decreasing cost and avoiding possible damage.